Lawyer for Radical Sheik Admits She Was Aware He Advocated Violence

A barrage of questions from a federal prosecutor yesterday forced Lynne F. Stewart to acknowledge that she was fully aware of the history of ruthless terrorist violence by the Egyptian followers of a fundamentalist Muslim client whom she is accused of aiding illegally.

The implacable cross-examination by the prosecutor, Andrew Dember, came on the seventh day of testimony by Ms. Stewart, who is charged with violating prison restrictions on her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. The prison rules were imposed to prevent the cleric, who is serving a life sentence for terrorist conspiracy, from communicating with his followers in the Islamic Group, a militant organization in Egypt.

Ms. Stewart's responses resulted in the most damaging day for her so far in the trial, which began in Federal District Court in Manhattan in late June. The prosecutor focused on how much she knew about the Islamic Group when she called a Reuters reporter in Cairo on June 14, 2000, to read him a press release from Mr. Abdel Rahman, the group's spiritual leader. The prison rules explicitly barred Ms. Stewart from helping her client to communicate with the news media.

In rapid succession, Mr. Dember asked Ms. Stewart if she knew, when she issued the press release, that Mr. Abdel Rahman had "advocated violence," that he favored overthrowing the secular Egyptian government of President Hosni Mubarak and replacing it with an Islamic state, that he opposed the United States' support for Mr. Mubarak and that he believed the state of Israel, in Mr. Dember's words, "essentially should be destroyed."

To each question Ms. Stewart answered that yes, she had known that when she issued the press release. In the statement, Mr. Abdel Rahman said he was withdrawing his political support for a cease-fire that his group had observed in Egypt since 1997.

Mr. Dember asked Ms. Stewart if she was aware that the Islamic Group had claimed credit for several bloody attacks on tourists in Egypt in the mid-1990's, before the cease-fire. He asked if she knew that a statement had been released under the group's name in that period saying that all American interests were "legitimate targets" for attack as long as Mr. Abdel Rahman remained in an American jail.

"I believe I did," said Ms. Stewart, who represented the sheik at the 1995 trial, at which he was convicted of inspiring a thwarted plot to bomb tunnels and buildings in Manhattan.

Did Ms. Stewart know that public threats had been issued against the warden of the prison where Mr. Abdel Rahman was held and other justice officials, Mr. Dember asked.

You are already subscribed to this email.

The line of questioning was important for the government, which has charged that Ms. Stewart, in allegedly breaking the prison rules, provided material aid to terrorism by making the sheik's words and views available to his violent followers. The evidence is strong that Ms. Stewart violated the letter of the prison rules, but the terror charges, which carry the heaviest penalty, are less clear.

Ms. Stewart sought to qualify many of her responses. She said she understood that by 2000, the Islamic Group was "in a very weakened position," battered by crackdowns by the Egyptian authorities. Her client's support of violence against the Egyptian government, she said, was based on his view that it was an oppressive and anti-Islamic regime. She noted that an assassination attempt on Mr. Mubarak in June 1995 had been disavowed by the Islamic Group's leadership.

She said that her client had nothing to do with the statement calling for attacks on Americans. "The people that were saying that were clearly out of our control and using his name once again," she said. She found the threats against the prison warden "unfortunate and sort of absurd, under the circumstances," apparently because she felt there was no chance that Mr. Abdel Rahman could ever be sprung by violence from jail.

No evidence presented in the trial has shown that any act of violence ever resulted from the statement from the sheik that Ms. Stewart released or any other of her actions. The Islamic Group never abandoned the cease-fire, despite Mr. Abdel Rahman's suggestion.

Ms. Stewart remained calm throughout the questioning and generally kept her responses matter-of-fact. But Mr. Dember's questions made her appear somewhat indifferent about the potential violence from the sheik's militant followers.

In the afternoon, Mr. Dember explored Ms. Stewart's own philosophy about political violence, probing her views about several bloody attacks in Iraq, Israel and Ireland, as well as in Egypt. Ms. Stewart, who described herself in testimony last week as a "revolutionary with a small 'r,"' said she believes that violence is sometimes necessary to bring about the sweeping changes she supports.

Institutions of government that perpetuate "entrenched capitalism," she said, "do have to be attacked," although she added that she does not think the United States is ripe for the revolution she envisions. She said she does not believe in "wanton massacres," like one especially deadly Islamic Group attack on tourists in Egypt in 1997. But in a war of resistance, like the one the Palestinians, in her view, are waging in Israel, she said, "you can't always single out the combatants from the noncombatants."